Midway through a 1970 acid trip, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis remembers wondering “What happened to yesterday?” when he looked at the newspaper and saw he was scheduled to pitch a game that very afternoon. As recounted in “No No: A Dockumentary,” opening Friday, Ellis hurried from Los Angeles to San Diego and pitched a no-hitter while under the influence of LSD.

At least that’s the legend.

“Dock Ellis had this sort of folkloric, Paul Bunyan quality,” director Jeffrey Radice says. “Every story you hear about him is crazier than the last one. But when I chased them down, they’re all heavily based in factual reality.”

Radice became intrigued with Ellis when he heard “Dock Ellis,” a song recorded by Bay Area singer Barbara Manning. After reading U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall’sEllis biography, Radice reached out to the athlete by phone. Ellis agreed to participate in the documentary but died in 2008 before Radice had a chance to interview him on camera.

“At that point I reimagined the film as a story told from the perspectives of everyone else in Ellis’ life,” Radice says.

Blending archival footage and interviews with ex-wives and former teammates, “No No” sheds light on major league baseball’s drug culture in the early 1970s, when amphetamines fueled high performance on the field.

“Almost everyone was taking 'greenies,’ so it was socialized as being normal,” Radice says. “Dock quickly got to a point where he couldn’t pitch without Dexamyl.”

“No No” revisits Ellis’ drug-fueled heyday, including a beanball rampage that took out Reggie Jackson, as well as his groundbreaking performance against Vida Blue in the first All-Star Game to feature two black pitchers. But the film also depicts Ellis after he retired, got sober and started counseling other addicts.

“Once Dock admitted he had a problem and became more open about his fears, that’s where the film becomes a hero’s journey,” Radice says. “Only by overcoming his internal demons did Dock share what he learned about himself with others. He wound up having a really positive social impact.”

While Kubrick tackled many genres, curator Steve Seid points out that all his films embodied a bleak vision: “Regarding his patent fatalism, Kubrick once said, 'However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.’ Thankfully, Kubrick’s light was in great supply.” The “Eyes Wide” retrospective runs through Oct. 31.

“We have the ability to tap into our membership to tell stories nobody else is telling,” says Josh Spector, the academy’s managing director of digital media and marketing. “Typically, when you see somebody like a screenplay writer or costume designer being interviewed, it’s to promote a specific movie, whereas what we’re doing is taking a step back to take a deeper look at their creative process. We feel like that approach becomes relevant to a broader audience.”

The series, which releases a new episode every Monday at www. youtube.com/user/academyoriginals, has garnered more than 1 million views since its summer launch.

“There’s a misconception that social media and video have to be dumbed down, but we have an average view duration of more than five minutes per video,” Spector says. “That speaks to our belief that there’s an underserved audience that wants thought-provoking content.”